“She’s not Italian”, Anna shouted, and then I heard Mr. Cukor say, “But she is Italian. She could do the entire scene in Italian!”
“Oh, dear God,” I thought, “what is he saying?”
“The eyes, they’re blue!” she barked.
But Mr. Cukor insisted, “I believe in her, and I want her in the picture, and those adorable blue eyes are all over northern Italy, Anna.”
Suddenly, with a thunderous laugh, she turned to me, grabbed my shoulders in what I prayed was an affectionate gesture and said, “Hokay! We try one day, today, hokay?” Then she was gone. Apparently Anna Magnani would do anything for George Cukor, even work with me.
Mr. Cukor quickly took me aside and said, “The scene is scheduled for two o’clock. You have the morning to work with Pamela to learn the lines in Italian just in case. And I think it would be a good idea if hairdressing darkened your hair even more. So get going. And don’t you think it’s time you called me George?”
While my hair was being redone, Pamela flew into action, script in hand. “Papa non piace parlare Italiano”, she would say, and I would repeat it. Every line of the scene was translated into Italian, and I would repeat and repeat until I was dizzy with the words.
The scene takes place outside the ranch house under a tree, where Anna flees after being humiliated by Tony Quinn’s character. Angie runs after her in sympathy, and the two women bond. At two o’clock we began to rehearse. We rehearsed the scene over and over, and each time Anna would do it differently. I was at a complete loss. When Mr. Cukor called for a take, I was trembling, afraid that I would lose my lines. In the first take I did lose them. Anna looked at me but not in anger. She penetrated me with those eyes, and I listened, really listened, to her silence. Suddenly, I could feel tears welling up. “What am I crying for?” I thought. I remembered my first line but said it in tears. George yelled, “Cut!”
“Oh, God help me”, I muttered. “I’ve ruined it already.”
But George whispered, “Darling, do it that way—but we can’t hear you.”
Anna took my hand and whispered, “All you have to do is respond from the heart.”
Again, we started from the top of the scene, but this time Anna began speaking in broken English, going in and out of Italian, and the scene began to take on a life of its own, different from rehearsals. I found myself listening carefully and responding on a gut level, the lines coming easily. Anna and I were both weeping now. She was allowing me to reach a genuine catharsis with her. That was her gift as an actress. I will never forget her for that.
We worked until eight o’clock that night. When the scene was over and the takes marked for printing, Anna said nothing to me. She simply got up and went to her dressing room.
As I walked to my dressing room, I was close to tears. There was a small note pinned to the door. Its message had been hastily scrawled: “I just saw you shoot the scene. I was tremendously proud of you. Now I not only love you as a person but love you as a talented young actress. You’ve made your ‘papa’ proud.” It was signed “Tony”. I hadn’t even known Anthony Quinn was there watching. His words coming at that moment meant more than I could ever tell him.
The next day I bumped into George and Anna on the lot as they emerged from a screening room where they had been watching rushes, the assembled prints of the previous day’s shooting, including my scene with Anna. In 1957 it didn’t occur to me to watch rushes. As George and Anna approached, I looked around for an escape, but there was none. Anna stopped in front of me. “Here it comes”, I thought. She looked me right in the eye and then, laughing, took hold of both my ears and shook me as hard as she could. Then they continued on. George, looking back for a moment, gave me a wink and the okay sign. Dear George. I hardly ever mention his name without prefacing it with “dear”. He was one of the kindest men I ever worked with, and I simply forgot he was the big man. He was just somebody who liked me very much. Later, when he wrote to me at the monastery, he would sign his letters “Old Uncle George”.
By the time the company moved to Carson City for the exterior scenes, I had begun feeling a real part of this family of actors. Anna and the Tonys became comrades, and I was their mascot. Even Anna couldn’t have been warmer to me. On location, invitations for dinner came from all sides, which helped in my constant concern about finances, given that per diem then was six dollars. Being the only young girl in the company meant nobody would let me pick up the check.
Away from the studio, Anthony Quinn was more attentive, his interest hinting at something other than paternal. Frequently he would ask her to dinner alone. But although he enjoyed flirting with her, he couldn’t shrug off his role as protector, so he kept hands off. Dolores enjoyed his company, especially hearing about his occasional forays into the theater, which started her thinking that she should investigate working on the stage.
One night, after dinner in nearby Reno, Tony showed me the town—that meant the casinos. I watched while he gambled, and every time he was ahead he would slip a silver dollar into my hand to play the one-armed bandits. I hit a jackpot, and the machine began spitting silver dollars all over the floor.
I called to Tony to come and see my good fortune, but before he could join me a man came up and asked how old I was. I very proudly announced I was eighteen just as Tony reached my side. He grabbed me by the arm and rushed me out, leaving my winnings on the floor. “But,” I protested, “my money!” “Never mind”, Tony said. “Good God, Dolores, you have to be twenty-one to gamble. We’ll get arrested.”
Sometimes Tony and I would drive to Lake Tahoe and just sit by the lake watching the sunset. Mostly we talked about acting. Acting was a religion to Anthony Quinn. He felt passionately about it and spoke often of wanting to establish a class for actors who needed an outlet when they weren’t working. He believed that talent must never be allowed to become stagnant and the only way to keep it alive is to act.
It was on one of these evenings that Tony confided that he once had the desire to become a priest. He told me he actually had begun to study for the priesthood, but the call to acting had been stronger. “Occasionally,” he said, “I’m sorry I didn’t continue, but judging by what my life has been and has become, the Church might say it is better off for my decision.” He said he hadn’t thought about that for a long time but somehow felt I would understand.
On our last evening, we were aware of a huge rock in the water that, as the sun set, began to hide the colors reflected on the lake’s surface. I asked him if there was anything in the world he would like at that moment. “I would like to move that rock,” he answered, “so we could have the reflection a little bit longer.” Lovely thought. Lovely man. We remained friends for the rest of his life.
What was it about Dolores Hart that persuaded adults, many years her senior, to confide in her? Anthony Quinn was but one of several. Paul Nathan also communicated with her at a deep level. Paul had been in analysis for a number of years, a fact not generally shared with his professional colleagues, but he was quite candid about his problems when he and Dolores talked.
—Paul was blessed with an enhanced wittiness that enabled him to reveal some mighty heavy pain and still get a laugh. Perhaps Mom was wise when she demanded I not be renamed, that Dolores was essential. You see, Dolorosa, the Mother of Sorrows, bears witness to man’s redemption. A Dolores has to be a listener.
After the film wrapped, Dolores was free to join Paramount’s talent program, run by Charlotte Clary. Mrs. Clary maintained a family atmosphere in the talent school, which became for Dolores an enclosure within the enclosure of the studio itself. Classes were held in voice, dance movement and acting. Her classmates were Earl Holliman, George Chakiris, Ursula Andress and three young actors who would become lifelong friends: James Douglas, Valerie Allen and Jan Shepard.
The first project for Clary and her young players was Arthur Laurents A Clearing in the Woods, which was to be presented once only on a Paramount soundstage for all of the studio’s
producers, directors and casting personnel. When the play was performed, however, only Paramount’s talent scout Milt Lewis was in the audience.
Dark, good-looking James Douglas had the leading male role in the play. At the time, James was separated from his wife, Dawn, and turned to Dolores—not for romance but for comradeship. Theirs was a friendship that would become even closer when James and Dawn reconciled and would fully blossom when the couple moved to Connecticut after Dolores entered Regina Laudis.
Dolores, Jan and Valerie were inseparable on and off the lot. Contract player Valerie was a former Las Vegas dancer who had every one of her options picked up for four years straight, though she made only one film for the studio. Valerie was very pretty window dressing, the one who cut the ribbons at openings and posed with visiting dignitaries. She could be relied on to add glamor and sex appeal to any studio function.
Although Jan Shepard appeared to be Dolores contemporary, she was a little older and already married, to actor Ray Boyle. In an odd coincidence, Ray had been a buddy of Dolores father when both were recently discharged servicemen hanging out at the Actors Lab and Schwab’s drugstore on the Sunset Strip with other aspiring actors. Jan was a devout Catholic and shared Dolores appreciation for church buildings. Jan recounted, “Many times we would be driving around LA and spot a Catholic church we had never seen and, on the spur of the moment, stop for a quick look-see.”
She also remembered waking early one morning to find Dolores sleeping in her car in the Boyles driveway. She had been there all night, having escaped from a drunken row with Harriett.
It was the same old “Big movie star, you have everything—I have nothing, not even a marriage.” I shouted back, “Why should anyone want to stay married to you if you’re just a drunk?” I grabbed a framed picture of myself, one that Mom treasured, and threw it to the floor, smashing it. Then I stormed out of the house. I drove around aimlessly for a while and finally found myself at the Boyles and parked outside.
“It scared me to death”, Jan said. “I brought her into the house and made her promise she would never do that again.” Jan and Ray turned their den into a guest room that Dolores often used as an escape from Harriett’s chain rattling.
Like Loving You, A Woman Obsessed was renamed just before its release because of the title song. As Wild Is the Wind the film got a major premiere in Los Angeles, which was everything Dolores had dreamed of on Mulholland Drive.
My whole family was there—my mother and stepfather and Granny and Grandpa, who was puffed out to here with pride because this was better than being prom queen. Mom had made a beautiful dress for me, and I remember thinking when I looked at myself in the mirror, “The Father has put me in the limelight as the lady I dreamed of becoming. God has been good in letting me have these things for now.” And then I wondered why “for now”. I was being given the life I always wanted, wasn’t I?
By the end of 1957, Dolores had two movies in release: Loving You, which introduced her to Presley’s massive teenage audience, and Wild Is the Wind, which would be an Academy Award contender with nominations for Magnani and Quinn as well as Dimitri Tiomkin and Ned Washington for their song.
Dolores had struck a note with reviewers, getting positive notices for both minor roles, and when lists of the most promising new female personalities of the year began appearing, her name was there alongside Joanne Woodward, Sophia Loren and Lee Remick.
When the annual Photoplay magazine awards were handed out to the most promising newcomers of 1957, Dolores was in the company of Woodward, Franciosa, Pat Boone and Tony Randall. Hollywood columnists Hedda Hopper and Louella Parsons each published end-of-the-year lists of future stars. Both included Dolores. She was one of the 1957 Deb Stars, debuting movie actresses for whom stardom was predicted by the Motion Picture Hairstylists and Makeup Artists. Essentially a publicity event, the Deb Star Ball always got a great deal of domestic and foreign press coverage.
Dolores Hart was just about the most envied teenager in Hollywood, and she had been a professional actress for less than one year.
It looked as if Hal Wallis just might have gotten himself a star.
Seven
Dolores was again cast opposite Elvis Presley in the musical drama King Creole, loosely based on Harold Robbins’ A Stone for Danny Fisher. The property had been announced numerous times for production with various young actors slated for the lead role, James Dean and Tony Curtis among them.
Before filming started, I caught up a little on Elvis. I listened to his recordings and went to my first and only Presley concert. The next day I was surprised and not a little outraged when I read a review that called him “vulgar”. I found nothing vulgar in his performance. I thought that his rather innocent sexual energy moved to the soul of the new youth culture and that he gave that culture a voice.
Her casting interested several of the bigger agencies in Hollywood, all of which came calling. The advice from Wallis, Nathan and others at the studio was unanimous: she should change agents. The most recommended name among them was Phil Gersh at Famous Artists. Dolores liked Gersh and agreed that a stronger agency could certainly do more for her. Alvarado immediately sued Gersh for stealing his client and damaging his reputation. Ultimately an arrangement was worked out, though Alvarado privately felt Dolores was an ingrate. At this point, she was hardly a moneymaker for any agency, but everyone at Famous Artists, especially Harry Bernsen, was convinced she was going to make it big. Bernsen began canvassing the town for TV roles for their new client before King Creole started shooting.
I trusted Harry’s counsel because he was obviously more interested in building my career than he was in the money. I mean, there was no money. He wanted to put me into big pictures eventually but felt exposure on television could only help make me better known. Remembering what Tony Quinn told me about the theater, I asked Harry if he could also check out summer-stock possibilities for me.
Dolores first TV job was on the popular anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents. In the mystery “Silent Witness”, she played a babysitter who was murdered in the first act. Her costar was Don Taylor, who fifteen years earlier had worked with her father in Winged Victory. “Silent Witness” was followed by “Man on a Rack” with Tony Curtis and Everett Sloane on the Schlitz Playhouse of Stars.
Dolores would ultimately appear in only two other filmed television shows—in 1959 on The Dupont Show with June Allyson and in 1963 on a segment of The Virginian. She also made three appearances on The Christophers, the long-running Sunday morning program of interviews and readings featuring Catholic stars such as Rosalind Russell, Ann Blyth and Pat O’Brien.
With the release of Loving You, I started to receive fan letters, ten or fifteen a week, most of them requesting autographed photos. I took them home and answered them myself in longhand. I ordered and paid for personal copies of publicity photos shot by Paramount’s portrait photographer, Bud Fraker, and purchased the needed envelopes and postage.
But Dolores soon found that she couldn’t keep up with the demand for photos and enlisted her stepbrother Martin to autograph them, paying him a nickel for each one he signed. He had to sign a hundred to make five bucks, but he did it. Years later he saw a “genuine autographed photo of Dolores Hart” offered for sale on the Internet and recognized the signature as one he had forged. Harriett got into the act too. She set up a makeshift office in the family garage and formed The Dolores Hart Fan Club with herself, under a pseudonym, as president.
Dolores kept some pieces of fan mail, which turned up in shoe boxes when I was researching her archive at the abbey. One I particularly liked was short and sweet: “You are my favorite movie star and Jane Russell is my second favorite.”
—Well, we were the same type.
As the fan mail increased, Dolores became concerned about the dollars-and-cents aspect. One day on the lot, she confided this to another Hal Wallis contractee, Shirley MacLaine, who told Dolores that the studio was happy to pay for fan mail expenses, includ
ing photos, envelopes and postage.
I had no sense at all about perks in the movie business. Because of Granny’s influence, I never lost sight of what something cost; even if the studio was footing the bill, I was careful not to take advantage. I preferred not to be thought of as an irritating property who made expensive demands.
Whenever the studio would send me to, say, New York for publicity, however, I would ask to be routed through Chicago. It didn’t cost the studio anything extra, and I could visit Granny without having to pay for my ticket. Not wanting to be thought of as uncooperative, I never turned down a request from the publicity department, though I was fast finding that those assignments had nothing to do with making movies. I shot a layout with Valerie Allen in Sun Valley to promote the popular winter resort as a year-round vacation spot and got an education in being a starlet. When you ‘re a Hollywood starlet, you’re expected to do cheesecake—slang for bathing-suit art in those days. The difference between Val’s figure and mine hadn’t escaped me, so each time the photographer would ask for more cleavage, I would cheerfully pass him on to her. I knew I looked better in jeans and boots than I did in a bikini.
She was also growing weary of another aspect of starletdom. She didn’t much like going to parties as window dressing. She could understand cutting ribbons at an opening. She had something to do, a function. But she thought mingling at parties was like being a geisha.
It was about this time that Dolores and I met. I was just out of the army, having done to the day my two years of drafted service following graduation from UCLA, and I was working for Globe Photos, which led to our meeting at the Susie Grobstein night-on-the-town photo layout.
A week after our meeting, I was still thinking about Dolores and dropped her a note. She replied in kind. A flurry of short notes were exchanged that led to our first date, after which I received a handmade card “from D to D”, which is what we began calling each other. It featured a big-headed figure with a silly grin saying: “I’m so happy.” On the inside, it read: “And it’s all your fault.”
The Ear of the Heart: An Actress' Journey From Hollywood to Holy Vows Page 8